Orcs of the Prairie, Part 2
Thud-thud-thud-thud.
Commander Marcus took the lead, and horses and wagons thundered down the valley. Drivers cracked their reins and bellowed for speed, shouting that they had to break clear, and fast. Modric, for his part, kept his head buried inside the wagon and harried the caravan hands without pause.
"Look alive! The goods! Aigoo—what's to become of our goods!"
Behind the fleeing column, the Humvee gave chase as well. The engine bellowed, a deep rolling roar, and the tires kicked gravel off the track as the vehicle gathered speed. If he put his mind to it, he could have been out of the valley already and then some—but the wagons and horses clogging the way ahead made a full run impossible.
"Damn it. Get out of the way!"
Now and then a dull tunk, tunk rang off the Humvee's roof. Small mercy. Crossbow bolts, it seemed, couldn't punch through the thick steel plate overhead. One thing confirmed, at least. The slaves riding inside were a little less to worry about.
IS-2 and IS-3 sat beside him. In the second row, four more were packed in—two women, a wounded man, and one other. Behind them he had cleared the cargo space and crammed in another four, and the last three rode in the trailer hitched to the rear. He checked that trailer in the mirror. The crossbows up on the heights were mostly hunting the wagon line ahead, but every so often a shaft dropped onto the cargo bed. They were holding up better than he'd expected. In the glass, a sturdy slave braced a riot shield and knocked the occasional arrow aside. Beneath him, two others curled tight and clung to the jolting floor. Not bad, for men already hurt. All that remained was to run the valley to its end.
Ting!
A bolt from above struck the windshield and glanced away.
Those damned bastards. Next chance I get, I'm coming back to wipe out every last one of them.
He clenched his teeth and stamped the accelerator. Torque surged through the engine, and the Humvee clawed the ground and ran.
Above the valley.
Red Fang saw the caravan racing along the floor below, yanked the reins, and drove his wolf on. The beast threw back its head and roared—graaaaaah!—then bounded across the valley rocks. Dozens of wolves, orcs astride them, tore after him through the stone.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
Red Fang snarled toward Sand Wind.
"Signal the exit! Tell them to seal the entrance. Now. Grrrngh!"
"Understood, High Warrior!"
Sand Wind lifted the horn at his belt to his mouth and blew with everything he had. A long, trailing note rolled out—brooooom—and carried far across the rocks.
"We're nearly there! Hold on!"
The horses ran on at a dead gallop, white foam flying from their mouths. A horse can hold its top speed for thirty minutes at best, and measured against the length of the valley, that was time enough to get clear. Marcus glanced overhead. No more arrows were falling from above. A mercenary riding at his flank yelled over the din.
"Looks like we shook them!"
With dozens of horses pounding the track, you had to shout just to be heard at all. A comrade bellowed back.
"Hey! Shut up! You'll jinx us!"
"Somebody gag that bastard Hans!"
"What! The exit's right in front of us!"
"Every time you open your mouth like that, it always—"
Then it happened.
Ahead, where the road cut through the valley mouth, a pack of orcs came pouring out, blades and clubs in hand.
"Grrrr—humans!"
"Graaah! Kill them! Humans!"
"No. Where did those things—"
The startled mercenary barely got the words out before the rebukes and curses crashed over him.
"See! You bastard!"
"I'll tear that mouth of his open myself! Don't stop me!"
"Kill him first!"
Through the shouting mercenaries, Marcus drove a hand into the case slung at his horse's side and drew something free. What came out in his grip was a long cavalry lance, the kind knights forged for a mounted shock charge. A lance. He leveled the long shaft, thick-ended and heavy, and roared.
"Shut your mouths and lock in on the flanks! We break through!"
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
The mounted mercenaries pressed in tight along Marcus's sides. With him at the point they formed a wedge, and the charge drove harder still.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Marcus never took his eyes off the front.
"Samuel!"
From a wagon back with the caravan, Samuel of the mercenary company hurled the ball of fire in his hand.
"Fireball."
A blaze the size of a volleyball sailed forward and dropped into the orc pack. It burst. Boom—boom! Flame and a thunderclap shook the valley to its bones, and a cloud of dust boiled up. The wind funneling through the gorge tore the cloud apart, and there they were—orcs flung left and right by the shock, sprawled across the stone.
"Graaah! A mage!"
"Kill the mage first!"
"Humans! Kill them all!"
The orcs were still thrashing to close their broken ranks when the charge finally hit the mouth.
"Kill them!"
"Hold the line!"
"Kraaaah!"
Howling, the orcs came on with steel in their fists—and in that same instant Marcus poured his inner force down the lance. The knight's art of turning raw mana into a weapon of war. Aura. A lance drunk on aura turned, in a heartbeat, harder than steel. And there was one thing more. An aura user could compress the power bound in a weapon and detonate it all at once. As he did now.
Bang!
With the report, a tight explosion leapt from the lance's tip and drove straight ahead. Where a mage's blast bloomed outward in a sphere, an aura user's shockwave punched a line through whatever direction he chose. A lance-shaped wave scythed through three or four orcs and kept going. The impact flung them backward through the air.
"Grngh!"
"Gack!"
"An aura user too!"
The charge slammed into the orcs whose line had come completely apart.
"Kill them!"
"Break through!"
"Orc bastards!"
Mercenaries swung halberds, long spears, and battle-axes and tore the defense open. Thuck—thuck-thuck—thuck!
"Graaak!"
"Die!"
An orc took a spear through the chest and was hurled back to slam into the dirt. A halberd came around and sheared a neck in a single stroke. A battle-axe, rising on the full weight of the gallop, snapped a rusted blade and split an orc's face with a wet crack. The cavalry punched through the orcs barring the road, smashed aside the ones rushing in from the flanks with the sheer mass of horse and rider, and ran on without breaking stride.
Relief at being clear of the valley got the better of one mercenary—Hans, the same one as before—and he let out a cry of raw delight too soon.
"We're through! Nothing to worry abou—"
He never finished.
From behind the rocky rise beside the valley, a pack of wolves came into view.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
Graaaaaah!
The lead wolf's roar set the rest of them off, wolves and the orcs on their backs screaming as one.
"Graaaah!"
"Kill them!"
"Humans!"
"Leave none alive!"
"For the orcs!"
The mercenaries turned their curses on Hans instead of the orcs.
"Damn it. Orc riders!"
"Kill that bastard first!"
"Somebody shut his mouth!"
This time even Commander Marcus let it pass no longer.
"Hans!"
"Yes, Commander!"
"Open your mouth once more before this fight is over, and I will kill you."
"Yes. Hup—"
Hans, halfway into the answer, clapped a hand over his own mouth.
Marcus was an aura user, high-grade even among mercenaries, and still the hundreds of orc riders boiling toward them left him no choice but to tighten. He checked the horses. As he'd feared, they were spent. Ten minutes at the outside. They had to lose the pack inside that window. For now, the only play was to get as far as they could.
"Wagons to the front. Escort them on both flanks and break clear."
"Yes, sir!"
"Got it, Commander!"
"Hans, you do not answer!"
Just then the wagons—caravan hands and slaves alike—cleared the valley and went hammering down the highway. But—
"Those bastards are on that side too."
As if they had been waiting all along, another band of orc riders came racing in to cut the road ahead. At a moment like this, magic was still the thing that helped most. Marcus shouted.
"Samuel!"
"I'm ready!"
Marcus set to charging the lance again and drove his horse on. They were just building speed for the rush when it happened.
Vrooooom—
Shaaaaa—
A heavy, thunderous roar, and a square-cut mass of rock blasted past the horses and tore away up the road.
"What the—!"
"What is that!"
"The baron bastard! Ah—no, the Baron's self-running carriage!"
The rock that had screamed past them was the automatic carriage of the baron they had met in Lorenzo.
"It can go that fast?!"
The mercenaries were not the only ones staring. As the Humvee raised a rooster tail of dust and ran, slaves and caravan hands in every wagon falling behind went wide-eyed, craning after it. Even the orcs driving their wolves to seal the highway were no different.
"Block it!"
"Fast! A ghost wagon!"
"A mage!"
The orc riders pushed harder still, and even with the Humvee bearing down they did not slow. By a bare margin they beat it onto the road ahead and seized the lane.
"Grrr! Ghost wagon! It stops!"
"Kill the mage first!"
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud.
Orcs crouched on their wolves hoisted rusted blades, clubs, crossbows—whatever they had.
Inside the Humvee, from the driver's seat, the wolves sprinting to cut him off looked almost funny.
"Idiots never learn until you beat it into them."
He watched the wolves bounding along in front of him and pressed the accelerator harder. The exhaust cracked open in a howl. The engine still had power left; it surged, and the Humvee shoved forward.
"It's coming!"
"Jump the wagon!"
"Fast! Faster—"
They meant to do what they always did—leap from wolf to wagon—but the Humvee came on faster than any of them had reckoned, and they missed the timing. And this was no wagon.
Whump!
A mass of iron slammed a wolf from behind. The animal couldn't eat the raw physics of it; it was pitched forward, then went tumbling across the road. A yelp. A wet, boneless crash. Wolf and rider, flung into the air and rolling, and the Humvee hit them anyway.
Bang!
Thuck!
Green blood and red sprayed together. The crumpled, twisted corpses of orc and wolf were batted aside and gone.
"Grrr! Human! Kill him!"
Wolves tried to glue themselves to his flanks. He sawed the wheel once, left and then right. Inertia and acceleration threw the heavy Humvee into a yaw, and he body-checked the orc rider closing on his side.
Whump!
A yelp. Another wolf and rider were smashed clear and sent rolling over the dirt.
"Like hell you sons of bitches are getting in front of me."
After that he kept at it—head-on into every rider who lunged or tried to cut him off, a sideswipe for the ones who came alongside, flinging them away. A few orcs chopped with axes. A few laid into the steel with blades. All they got for it was sparks skipping off the thick plate of a military vehicle. And somewhere in the middle of it the Humvee found another burst of speed, finished every orc rider who had meant to block the road, and ran on alone.
He checked the side mirror. Behind him the caravan was driving horses and wagons for all they were worth. But the wagon teams were already at their limit. He could see the orc riders swarming in around the slowing wagons.
He thought it over for a moment. From what he'd seen so far, it didn't look like anything that would get him killed. Not with the Humvee's armor, and a vest doubled up underneath. If it turned ugly, he could always just take to the air on levitation magic. Or so he told himself.
Then, unbidden, a thing he'd heard in snatches while traveling with the caravan came back to him.
In an unfamiliar Gaia, it wouldn't hurt to leave someone owing him.
He eased off the speed.
"Everybody hold on tight!"
The warning out, he hauled the wheel hard over. Tires shrieked—shaaaaa—and the Humvee swung through a wide, violent turn. Then he poured the speed back on, straight down the road he had just come tearing up.
Ahead, the caravan fled for its life. Behind it, orc riders came howling in pursuit.
He swallowed.
Fuck. This was the right call... right? He swallowed again.